I choose to write about this topic because of its lack of importance at the start of your photography business journey or any other business. You need to narrow down and focus on your specialty and make the best of it. It is something you’re confused and not so much focused on at the very beginning. We were all there.

But you will probably say: “How can you when you don’t have clients that would pay for your service?”

Find them and find your way! The market is big out there.

When you start a photography, you usually photograph everything. Even things you’re not really fond of photographing. That’s what I was doing. I have to admit, sometimes I still do. Why? I will explain.

If you’re from a small country as I am and If you’re trying to focus on one particular niche at a very start of your photographic journey you’re going to have a really hard time. Trying to make it successful right away is going to be even harder. It’s not that you can’t make it, its just you have to have really good connections and expertise to do so or you have to be born under a really lucky star 🙂 I don’t know. Nothing ever comes that easy. With no hard work and no hustle, there are no results. Sorry, It’s the ugly truth.

So choose a niche for yourself but work hard to get to the point you could say “NO” to photographing things that you have no interest in photographing. It’s all about the survival on the market. It’s all about the art of running a successful business and paying bills at the end of the day. I can focus on photographing creative portraits and have that written all over my portfolio, but at my very start, I’m going to photograph everything people hire me and pay me for. It is life and it’s surviving at the market.

Just to dive in a little bit more.
So what is actually a photography niche?
Well, It’s your brand. It’s something people can hire you to do for them. It is your specialty and it is your “sign” they see when they look at your profile page, your portfolio, when they see you, your work, etc, …
For example, you love photographing weddings but you’re not really fond of doing newborn photography. Or for example, you prefer taking pictures outside using natural light, but you don’t like working in a studio using controlled light. That’s ok. You have to find your “thing” and specialize it. Stick to that specific area of the field that really drives your passion and speaks to your heart. And when you feel that drive, stick to it and never let it go. I guarantee you the success is inevitable.

If you want to learn more about this topic you should totally check out these pages:

My goal for this post is using the simplest and fastest way to teach you the basics. So let’s get going.

When we talk about exposure we simply mean the brightness or darkness of a photo. It seems so simple to take a photo that is correctly exposed (has the proper brightness or darkness), but in reality, it can be quite a challenge.
If you’re reading this, it probably means that you currently use the automatic settings of your camera. It means that the camera entirely controls the exposure of the picture. When you shoot on automatic mode, your camera selects an ISO setting, an aperture setting, and a shutter speed. Automatic limits your ability to take more creative, beautiful, unique photos. But when you shoot in manual setting you can control all those three features yourself.
I shot this picture below just to show you the difference.

So to understand how your camera works you need to learn about three parameters that control exposure:

ISO

Aperture

Shutter speed

ISO – the measure of a digital camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. ISO number (up or down) represents a doubling or halving of the sensor’s sensitivity to light.

Aperture – the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken. aperture setting is indicated by the f-number.

Shutter Speed – the amount of time that the shutter is open and is measured in fractions of a second.

Here’s also cheat sheet so you can better understand how all those three components work together

So It all began a few years ago when I needed textures for my mixed media art. While taking photos of different textures compositing them with other photos taken by random people I figured I would love to take all images by myself and compose them into something unique, something that is all mine. That’s where it all started. I picked my DSLR camera Nikon D5100 at that time and started taking all kind of photos. I enjoyed photographing animals, people, practically anything that moved :). That’s when I decided to take my photography knowledge to the next level and started project 365. Making the commitment to take one photo every day for an entire year was a real challenge and the execution even bigger. But now I can say it was the best thing ever.

Photography became my life, my love, and my passion.

In this series of posts, I will try and share with you everything that I’ve learned about photography at my very beginning. I’m going to try and make it as easy as possible for you to understand everything you need to know to start.

So if you bought a new DSLR camera and would love to take cool photos but don’t know where to begin you came to the right place.